RUNNING HEAD: Acellus the Science of Learning 1

Multimedia Critique Paper Number Three:

Acellus the Science of Leaning

Kedralyn L. Folk

Coastal Carolina University

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Educators are often tasked with filling in learning gaps at the start of each school year.

Especially, important skills such as number sense or reading comprehension. The Acellus

learning program fills in the gaps using “swiss cheese problems.” These problems help the

program to target the individual student’s exact misunderstanding and provide instruction on the

skills needed. Acellus markets itself as the blended learning solution. It does provide a blended

learning model where the teacher in classroom and computer program work together to progress

the student. This unique computer program uses intelligent interaction to cater educational

content to the individual learner. Through various video based lessons, students are immersed in

an online classroom following a I do, we do, you do model. The Acellus program gives students

in grades kindergarten through twelfth grade, a grade level comprehensive curriculum to follow

based on Common Core State Standards and/or South Carolina College and Career Ready

standards.

Acellus is a computer-based program. There must be internet access to use it, however

with internet access teachers, students, and parents can access Acellus. In the learning program

video, audio, text and other graphic elements are used to present students with various problems

in various subjects. These subjects include math, science, social studies, English language arts,

engineering and vocational training lessons. There are options for the student to change the

screen to display to view only the problem or story passage, only the questions or both at the

same time. Seeing both the problem or story passage and the questions simultaneously is a great

tool. The Acellus learning program allows students to also learn how to use a computer properly

and type. These skills are essential to their progress. Students can highlight and annotate the

problems and story passages as needed. This encourages student interaction with their computer

work, so they are actively learning.

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The Acellus learning program prides itself in providing research based, data driven

instruction. The program organizes data. Teachers have access to the data and can use it to drive

their in-classroom instruction. Acellus also has short videos for openers in the teacher-led

classroom and other classroom resources. It has many qualities of a fun, engaging computer

based program. There is a kid-friendly amount of animation, fun graphic text and pictures. The

program uses many eye-catching colors to keep students interested. Below in figure one is a

display of subject excerpts. Link to these videos: https://www.acellusacademy.com/our-

approach/

Figure 1 Acellus Excerpt Videos

One of the best parts of Acellus is though the computer program has a cost Acellus is a

non-profit company that utilizes grants and other funding sources. Many schools and other

agencies who use the program were able to purchase using grant funding with minimal cost to

them. Acellus offers everything an instructor would need to teach meaningful and valuable skills

in a blended learning setting. Via the teacher portal, teachers have access to all student data in

real time, complete with tables, grades and diagnostics. There is also the live class monitor.

Teachers can monitor and see anything the students see on their screen and they can offer help. It
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is a great progress monitoring tool. The Acellus gradebook keeps track of every lesson and exam

grade. Below, in figures three and four are the student dashboard and video based lesson.

Figure 3 Student Dashboad

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Figure 4 Video Lesson

Acellus has the potential to teach and reteach essential skills needed in various subjects.

In relation to multimedia learning, students should experience a pre-training before using the

Acellus learning program. The pre-training principle states that people learn better when the

multimedia message is given after the learner knows the characteristics and names of the main

concepts (Mayer & Pilegard, 2014). Acellus has projected versions of their content. A teacher

could use Acellus lesson projections to model for students how to use the content before

releasing them to use the learning program. Teachers have the option to assign specific

assignments for certain students.

Acellus also, incorporates the spatial contiguity principle, the coherence principle, and

the image principle (Mayer & Fiorella, 2014). The spatial contiguity principle states that people

retain information better from a multimedia message when matching phrases and words are

presented near each other rather than far apart (Mayer & Fiorella, 2014). Closeness and word
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relation play a significant role in multimedia learning. Students are presented with information in

a clear, cohesive format in the Acellus learning program. Once they begin working with the

program the entire screen is dedicated to that assignment. Below in figure five the goals and

progress screen. Students will all have goals set and they can track their progress in real time.

Figure 5 Student Goals and Progress

Students are in control of rather to make their screen full size, split screen, cut sound on

or off and rather or not have the passage read to them. These controls allow students to have

choice in their cognitive information process. Driscoll (2005), states that the information

processing system of the learner has three stages: sensory memory, working (short-term)

memory and long-term memory. Each stage represents how learning occurs through information

input from the environment, it is processed and then stored in memory. Whatever is learned can

be demonstrated in various ways, such as on an Acellus exam. Students interact with Acellus by

moving the computer mouse and manipulating the controls on the screen.
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The multimedia principle states that people learn best from words and pictures rather than

just words alone (Butcher, 2014). Acellus uses words and pictures to help students master many

learning skills. Throughout each Acellus lesson, he or she will be exposed to words and pictures

to increase their overall learning. The personalization principle says people learn better from

multimedia lessons when words are in conversational style rather than formal style (Mayer,

2014). Acellus uses real teachers in their video-based lessons.

A redesign of Acellus would be completely free so all learners would have access to the

program. Acellus does not support the segmenting principle. Students would benefit from the site

using the principle in the curriculum. Segmenting is designed to reduce essential overload (p.

316). The segmenting principle states that people learn better when the multimedia message is

displayed in learner-paced parts rather than as a continuous system (Mayer & Pilegard, 2014).

Acellus is not user-paced. The computer program paces content for their learner. Students would

benefit from a user-paced design, giving them greater autonomy over their learning. For

students, Acellus is an exciting computer program to work with daily.

Acellus is a purposeful and useful computer-based program. The benefits of using it can

be seen quickly and students enjoy using it versus the traditional classroom setting. It is a great

way to teach and review essential reading skills. Acellus can serve as a motivator to any student

who struggled initially with their learning. Teachers can use this as a progress monitoring tool

and tailor assignments to meet student needs. However, there are a few improvements that

would increase multimedia learning.

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References

Acellus. (2018). Retrieved from https://about.Acellus/

Butcher, K. R. (2014). The Multimedia Principle. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia

Learning,174-205.

Driscoll, M. (2005). Psychology of Learning for Instruction (3rd ed.) (pp. 71-77). Boston, MA:

Allyn and Bacon.

Mayer, R. E., & Fiorella, L. (2014). Principles for Reducing Extraneous Processing In Multimedia

Learning: Coherence, Signaling, Redundancy, Spatial Contiguity, and Temporal Contiguity

Principles. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning,279-315.

Mayer, R. E., & Pilegard, C. (2014). Principles for Managing Essential Processing in Multimedia

Learning: Segmenting, Pre-training, and Modality Principles. The Cambridge Handbook of

Multimedia Learning,316-344.

Mayer, R. E. (2014). Principles of Multimedia Learning Based on Social Cues: Personalization,

Voice, and Image Principles. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning,345-368.